Garth Brooks Named Best-Selling Artist of Soundscan Era

With 2012 just beginning to unfold, Billboard and the Nielsen Company compiled their annual year-end music industry report, providing a top 10 list of the best-selling artists of the entire Soundscan era. Sitting atop the list is Garth Brooks with a whopping 68.5 million sales, more than 3 million over the number two artist on the list — The Beatles with 63.3 million.

Since Billboard has only been using Soundscan since 1991, the list doesn’t provide data about the best-selling music of all time, but it does give a clear window into the past 20 years and the artists who dominated those decades.